Entertaining, but heavily clichéd

Rating: 6/10 (24 January 2014)

While this movie was for the most part entertaining, featuring some rather gorgeous looking special effects shots, the plot and dialog leave something to be desired. I marked this review as containing spoilers only because I'm going to tell you that pretty much everything happens as one would expect it to happen in an action movie. Nearly every scene with dialog fulfills some overwrought trope of how things work in action movies. I kept hoping there was going to be some sort of interesting plot development, and felt entirely disappointed by the blandness of the plot. I'm hoping the one tiny twist to the plot was explored more in uncut footage; while there's significant time spent in the development of that part of the plot, the important information uncovered through those scenes is basically just acknowledged and the everyone moves on as planned.
There's also a gratuitously planted scene in the middle of an action sequence featuring Newton's cradle/balls for no interesting reason; even if there's an intended connection with the character named Newton, it's so heavy-handed that I couldn't believe it was actually being done.